Utilitarianism moral and culture PDF

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The assignment on utilitarianism. final draft. 7 pages total...

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Utilitarianism Emma McQuade

210303670 [email protected]

PP110-Tutorial T8 Dr. Ashwani K. Peetush December 3rd 2021

What exactly is utilitarianism? Well, according to famous philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, utilitarianism is: “an action (or type of action) is right if it tends to promote happiness or pleasure and wrong if it tends to produce unhappiness or pain—not just for the performer of the action but also for everyone else affected by it.” It is the greatest good for the majority of the people. It is prevalent and one of the dominant forms of ethical reasoning in society however there are substantial problems with this kind of approach in which I will explore in this paper. In particular I will argue that as a normative philosophical theory, rule utilitarianism can respond to some of the most perplexing criticisms levelled by utilitarianism. I will argue that rule utilitarianism can address the most common criticisms of the theory, namely that it contradicts with justice and human rights, and that it shouldn't be the primary tool for deciding between right and wrong. An example of this idea would be that there are 5 pills, 4 people need 1 and the other needs the 5. Those individuals need the pill to survive. The most you can do is save 4 or the 1. Here is the tricky part, if you decide to save the 4, what if the 5th is Albert Einstein, or could even be Hitler. Would this be a good thing? The world we know today is because he was alive. The second world war wouldn’t have happened so the world wouldn’t have gotten together to fight Germany. Any situation could end up good or bad. You don’t know the outcome of the situation.

I will advocate

that utilitarianism is not the only way to correctly address decision making. You can’t make one ism apply to all issues of right or wrong because the world is not black or white. The grey in the middle requires that you look at the rightness and wrongness of an issue from many different perspectives to understand how a decision can impact the outcome. Using only one ism means you are not considering all perspectives and therefore you can’t be certain you are making the

right or wrong decision. If you use all the isms, you will be making a more informed decision and be most likely to be making the right decision of rightness or wrongness. We should also use logic and reasoning to be able to make a thorough decision that will have the best outcome. In the view of a utilitarian, they believe that using this approach will lead to further content and the greatest good for everyone. For example, when ordering food for you and your friends, the majority will take stand and get what they want. If 4 out of 5 people want pizza, then that’s what will be ordered. As you can see, this will satisfy the majority of the people and they will be content with this decision. Also in politics, the most votes for any political party will end up getting elected, which means it will satisfy the majority of the people in society. We have to choose the option that will benefit us and produce the most satisfactory results.

Then again, utilitarianism

should not be the only tool to help you form a well thought out decision. If that one person that did not vote for pizza is vegetarian and gluten intolerant, then they are sacrificed for the majority. Clearly this is not a fair scenario. Instead, they should compromise and get a vegetarian and gluten free pizza on the side so it is fair for everyone. Although utilitarianism doesn’t believe in this. They believe the majority wins and we sacrifice the others that wouldn’t have picked the same option. Life and decisions cannot be purely based on utilitarianism by itself. The issue with utilitarianism is that it does not advocate justice as of itself, its weakness has to do with justice of the people in question. In this instance, someone in a small town has created a crime and has injured someone. As the judge, you know that putting an innocent man to death will quiet the town and restore harmony. If you let him go, further discontent will arise,

causing more harm to the town and its residents. In situations like these, utilitarianism appears to demand that the innocent be punished. Punishing an innocent person is immoral because it is unjust and violates his rights. The utilitarian, on the other hand, is just concerned with the net gain in happiness. If the happiness of the many is sufficiently increased, it may be justified to make one (or many) people miserable in the service of the others. This is why utilitarianism is not a sufficient way of making a logical and reasoning decision. Human are very good at making their own decisions. If the majority of people decide to get rid of catholic school systems, then that sacrifices the ones that would rather attend a catholic school rather than a public school. Humans are very selfish when it comes down to being faced with a tough decision, no matter their upbringing.

Although, in a

utilitarian view, they believe they are doing the best for the majority of people. This way its fair right? They believe that utilitarianism is a positive thing in society and we should implement it in our lives. More people benefit from which ever decision you make. Your decision will be more popular since the majority agree and its easy for people to support decision. When u claim a change, it will be easy cause people want that change. A great example would be the story of Marie Antoinette the queen of France in the late 1750s. She was known to feed the ones that couldn’t afford to put food on the table for their families. The rich didn’t seem to like what she was doing so she got beheaded. In this example, you can see that she was doing the greatest good for the majority of the people, although the ones that weren’t in the majority didn’t accept what she was doing.

Under no

circumstances should human rights be violated. The ability to walk away free when innocent is the most basic of human rights. The utilitarianism hypothesis appears to imply that not only are

these behaviours moral, but that we should engage in heinous acts, and any theory that does so is clearly flawed. This notion could be used to excuse the notion of putting an innocent man behind bars. What kind of theory allows anything like this to happen? Happiness, according to utilitarian’s, should be maximised, yet happiness is not the sole good in life. It is something we strive for in life, but it should not be the primary goal. We should also strive for justice, which utilitarianism fails to achieve.

Although utilitarianism can be good

for some circumstances, the bad outweighs the good. We are choosing what’s best for most people, or let chance take its course. Your decision can have good or bad outcomes. Utilitarianism is a tool that can help make decisions but shouldn’t be the only tool. We cannot impact the future neither play God to decide who lives and dies. The trolley experiment is also a great way explain this phenomenon Try putting names to the people that will die. Try putting names to the people that will lives. This will drastically change your decision and morals.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/utilitarianism-philosophy...